LINGUIST List 14.760

Mon Mar 17 2003

Qs: 'Into-Causatives', Possessive Noun Phrases

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Dear colleagues
[apologies for multiple postings!]
A colleague and I are currently working on the construction
exemplified in (1)
(1)
a. He can trick the doctor into giving him an alibi. (BNC:FF0)
b. They were forced into formulating an opinion. (BNC:CF4)
c. He talked me into staying two more days. (BNC:CCW)
Obviously, the common elements are 'V into V-ing' and we also seem to
remember that this construction has been referred to as
'into-causative.' We already have collected enough examples for our
analysis, but, apart from a cursory treatment of this construction in
Hunston and Francis (2000) 'Pattern Grammar', we do not know of any
literature dealing with this construction. Can anybody please point us
to previous works on this construction? I'll post a summary
later. Thanks a lot in advance.
Stefan Th. Gries
- ---------------------------------------------------------
IFKI, Southern Denmark University
http://people.freenet.de/Stefan_Th_Gries
- ---------------------------------------------------------

Dear LinguistListers,
I'm looking at the ways English speakers handle the construction of
possessives in coordinated noun phrases where there is a proper noun
and a 1st person singular pronoun, such as "Dave's and my paper was
accepted". I have heard all sorts of variations, including 'Dave's and
mine ...', 'Me and Dave's...', and even 'Dave and I's'.
Does anyone know of any work on this topic, whether sociolinguistic,
psycholinguistic, syntactic, etc?
I'd also like to hear your personal method(s) of handling this
construction, as well as any thoughts you'd be willing to share.
I will post a summary.
Thanks,
Karen Milligan